Nissan Motor Company and NEC Corporation announced that they would invest about $1.1 billion to manufacture Li-Ion batteries

According to Nikkei Business Daily, the battery packs will be supplied to about 200,000 cars annually, starting 2011. The manufacturing process will start from 2009 and gathered Nissan, NEC and NEC Tokin Corporation together. The companies plan to manufacture 13,000 batteries a year, which will be equipped to sideloaders for the beginning.

Future plans include the increase of the manufacturing capacity that will reach 65,000 units a year, starting 2011. The batteries will be also used by Nissan, which will mount them on the company’s hybrid and electric car models.

According to a representative at NEC, Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC), the venture, plans to invest an even larger amount of money in order to increase the production capacity. However, Nissan representatives didn’t comment about these further plans.

Automotive Energy Supply Corporation also plans to build factories, both in the United States and Europe, as a venture’s representative stated that the governments in these countries offer important support for companies that manufacture environmental-friendly technologies.

Nissan and its carmaker partner, Renault, have already developed some electric and hybrid concept-cars.  An executive at the French company stated that the venture between NEC and Nissan had planned to build a facility in France in order to supply batteries to Renault’s electric car models.